Monrovia Nursery Company

Monrovia Nursery Company

Executive Summary about Monrovia Nursery by Ed Dinger

Operating as Monrovia Growers, privately owned Monrovia Nursery Company is one of the leading nurseries in the United States, supplying more than 5,000 garden centers with approximately 22 million plants in over 2,000 varieties.
Monrovia is constantly introducing new plants, relying on its own researchers as well as professional plant hunters who scour the globe for exciting new plants. Monrovia operates nurseries in Dayton, Oregon; Visalia, California; Springfield, Ohio; La Grange, North Carolina; and Cairo, Georgia. All told, Monrovia's operations cover more than 4,700 acres. Monrovia was founded in 1926 by Danish immigrant Harry Rosedale. He started his nursery on ten acres of land in Monrovia, California, and named his business after the town. Rosedale was a visionary in the nursery field. He played a pivotal role in developing the practice of growing plants in containers, thus avoiding the stress involved in uprooting a plant for sale. In the 1940s, Monrovia became the first nursery to follow a set schedule for truck delivery of its plants throughout California and Arizona. Then, in the 1950s, Monrovia became the first nursery to begin successfully shipping its container plants across the country, another practice that revolutionized the nursery industry.
Rosedale's innovations resulted in a thriving business, one that by the mid-1950s outgrew its acreage in Monrovia. During the 1950s, Monrovia became the first nursery to replace clay pots with plastic pots in liner production. Monrovia also made news on the business side. Furthermore, Monrovia became involved in retail, opening a string of Rosedale Garden Centers.
By 1970, Monrovia had to face up to the environmental impact of its operations. Containerized plants required twice as much irrigation as regular plants, because extra water was used to remove excess salt from the soil mix. To address these problems, Monrovia became the first nursery to develop a water recycling system, so that runoff water was captured, purified, and reused. In the system's final form, water flowed into sedimentation pits located at the lower ends of the nursery. Here, gravel, sand, and silt particles settled. Finally, the recycled water was mixed with an equal measure of new water and pumped into the nursery's 1.6 million gallon reservoir. In addition to tainted water, Monrovia also produced a great deal of refuse, such as discarded plants and packaging, prunings, and scrap lumber.